Historical Research: Nicolas Flamel and the Book of Abraham

Since quite a few HP fanfictions cite the legend of the Book of Abraham, it is necessary to clarify the real history here, lest the author be unfairly attacked by pseudo-archaeologists.

Nicolas Flamel's story began in the early fifteenth century, when an underground passage was discovered beside a cemetery in Paris. The walls of the passage were covered in Christian statues, including statues of Nicolas Flamel and his wife, indicating that the couple had funded the construction of the passage. This was real history; the passage was preserved until it was destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century.

Interestingly, alchemists of the time, including the famous Robert Duval, deciphered the secrets of these statues. The two dragons beneath them, bearing a tray on their backs, were actually symbols of the art of creating gold.

At the end of the sixteenth century, a legend suddenly emerged among the people: Nicolas Flamel possessed a mysterious occult tome that had helped him create the Philosopher's Stone, as well as gold and silver. This legend was recorded in a French book called Le Sommaire Philosophique.

As though that were not dramatic enough, an autobiography attributed to Nicolas Flamel appeared in the seventeenth century. It was titled Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques, known in Chinese as the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures.

In the book, this self-proclaimed Nicolas Flamel stated that he had been born during the reign of Philip VI of France and worked as a copyist of wills. One day, while at work, he accidentally acquired a book whose pages were made of bark and bound together with copper rings.

The book had no title, but it stated that it had been written by Abraham, a Jew. It contained twenty-one pages, all written in Ancient Greek. He could not understand it.

He decided to leave Paris and search for someone who could understand the book's secrets. Nicolas went to Spain and stayed there for a year, but found nothing. On his way back to Paris, he met a highly learned Jew named Canches, who taught him how to decipher the writing in the book.

Later, Canches died of illness, and Nicolas Flamel returned to Paris alone. In the third year after his return, Nicolas Flamel finally refined the Philosopher's Stone. It was said that the Flamel couple used it to create gold, amassing great wealth and doing many good deeds.

Now for the important part.

The mysterious book so confidently mentioned in the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures has never been found.

Archaeologists have also proven that the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures was a forgery. It could never have been written by Nicolas Flamel himself.

Its vocabulary and grammar did not appear until the seventeenth century and did not match Nicolas Flamel's era—the fifteenth century. Moreover, it mentioned many famous figures who had not even been born in Nicolas Flamel's time.

In summary: the Book of Abraham never existed. Those so-called authentic copies circulating online are all hoaxes.

Nicolas Flamel was a real person, as well as a wealthy and charitable man, but his money did not come from alchemy. Rather, his wife Perenelle inherited a large estate from her two deceased former husbands. (Rowling may well have drawn inspiration from this for her portrayal of Madam Zabini.)

In this story's setting, the inheritance Nicolas Flamel received was the upper half of the Book of Truth. Its contents were incomplete, containing only the knowledge required to create the Philosopher's Stone. It could only achieve "eternal life," not go any further to "raise the dead," much less "transcend eternity."

It was precisely because the inheritance was incomplete that his successful creation of the Philosopher's Stone was an unrepeatable coincidence. He could not create another Philosopher's Stone, nor could he teach this knowledge to anyone else. This was an act of goodwill on his part, meant to prevent others from being less fortunate than he was and failing to create the Sorcerer's Stone, only to cause other disasters as well.

As for where the lower half of the Book of Truth was, and what it contained, the author would like to keep that a secret for now!